The Grapefruit

Supposedly, Lady Diana ate half a grapefruit for breakfast every morning. I remember various dietary regimes my mother had been on throughout my childhood and half a grapefruit was the breakfast must-have in most of them. The grapefruit can also be found on well-assorted hotel breakfast buffets, often in juxtaposition right next to the bacon and eggs. As visually pleasing the grapefruit with its pinkish red pulp and the bright orange zest is and as healthy as it may be, having half a grapefruit for breakfast sounds like a rather sad meal and like a lot of lemon acid on an empty stomach, especially if you’re washing it down with black coffee.

It is also incredibly tiresome to expertly spoon out a grapefruit without making a mess. One needs to possess a certain skill to remove the pulp from its little chamber without destroying the thin skin that separates the chambers from each other. Tchibo sells special grapefruit spoons with one sharper side, almost like a knife blade, exactly designed for this purpose. A lot of effort for a breakfast that is not fulfilling. The only purpose a grapefruit serves to me is as a sour and fresh extra to any gin based beverage on ice.

“Ah, there we can already see it on the ultrasound.” The assistant doctor seems almost proud of his discovery as he points to the screen. “There is a tumor in your uterus, 13 to 15 cm large and round, like a grapefruit, you see?” I see black and white movement on the ultrasound, nodding as the word tumor echoes in my brain. “The grapefruit fits perfectly in your pelvis, that’s why you did not feel it until it started to dislocate now. Look, it’s just like a baby’s head shortly before giving birth.”

It’s Sunday morning and after having woken up with a sharp, breathtaking pain in my lower right abdomen, I had decided to go to the emergency room, thinking that my appendix had finally burst, an irrational childhood fear of mine ever since accidentally swallowing a cherry seed, that seemed to finally have come true. The first question the nurse had asked however, was if it's possible that I’m pregnant. No. Yes. I don’t know. Maybe? A first test had shown negative, the blood results didn‘t give any indications either. A doctor introducing herself as someone from the “belly surgery department” pokes into the soft flesh of my belly. “No, this is not the appendix, the swelling is way lower. That’s a case for the gynecology department”. She strips off her gloves, tosses them in a bin and rushes off, leaving me in the hallway of the emergency room on a stretcher, exposed belly up like a stranded whale on the beach.

No infected appendix and no pregnancy - a second test is made to be extra sure. Instead, the assistant doctor in the gynecology department finds a grapefruit. My brain has a hard time catching up with the turn of events, somehow a burst appendix sounded much more reasonable, even a pregnancy would have made sense in a way.

I sign countless forms, listen to warnings that aggravate by the hour as the tumor seems to be dancing a deadly tango with my ovaries. „Like an alligator, rolling around in a death roll, prey between its teeth“, says yet another doctor, clapping her hands together as she illustrates the movement. Within a couple of hours I need to come to terms with the possibility - or the fact - that I will lose an ovary, maybe a part of the uterus as well. “Had you planned to have kids?” No. Yes. I don’t know. Maybe? Do I have to decide now? What difference will my answer make at this point  anyway? It can’t be helped, the grapefruit needs to get out as soon as possible as the pain is intensifying and chances of saving anything of my so called reproductive system get smaller the longer we hesitate. A C-section. Another C word comes to mind, it has been evoked all morning, then quickly dismissed. A tumor this large should have shown tumor markers in the blood sample in case it really was cancer. They are 70% certain that it is not cancer. I don’t know if that is reassuring and I wish that I would have paid closer attention in statistics classes in college. 

I sign another paper, acknowledging an 80% chance of coming out of this operation infertile and a non-specified chance of dying during the procedure. The word gets an extra line on the paper, stands there alone, in small cursive letters. Death. The doctor underlines it twice with determined pen strokes.

They push me and my grapefruit across the hall in a wheelchair, standing upright, much less walking, has not been possible for a couple of hours anymore. I get put on another stretcher, this time dressed in a green surgery gown and a hood. My naked butt touches the cold metal, another hallway, lying and waiting for the operation room to free up, wishing I brought a blanket or at least a book. I am painfully aware of my uterus, I can physically feel its location in my abdomen. I imagine how the tumor is pushing against the cervix, against the walls of its fleshy prison, twisting itself around the ovaries, grappling for more space to expand to, suffocating me from the inside in the process. “Don’t worry”, says the anesthetist when he finally puts the mask on my face. “It’s going to feel like a champagne brunch but without the food”.

The next morning. It’s not even daylight yet when another assistant doctor tells me that they managed to remove the tumor successfully and restored the uterus as best as they could. I have a lot of questions about what restored exactly means and if as best as they could is going to be good enough but I am not able to form a sentence. While I am still high on painkillers, drifting in and out of dreamless sleep, the grapefruit is on its way down to the morgue where it will be dissected and analyzed, then tossed out with the trash. I’m thinking about the Tchibo knife-spoon. Hopefully they had breakfast already in the morgue. I should have asked to see it, my grapefruit, a product of my body that it had so carefully built over years apparently, undetected, nestled inside of my uterus like a fetus, completely outside of my knowledge and beyond my control.

Two other women are with me in the room, both had given birth the night before, they look absolutely exhausted. Their babies are sleeping in their arms as they whisper to them soothingly.

“Did you also give birth last night? Where is your little baby?” 

“No, they extracted a grapefruit.“

They look at me with a mix of incredulity and pity as they pull their little sleeping bundles closer to their bodies. The maternity ward is a cruel place. Especially for those who find themselves with grapefruits instead of babies or have to go home with an empty uterus and empty handed.